Welcome to Canadian Tire Fire, a new weekly roundup of anarchist and anti-authoritarian news from so-called Canada. We’re excited to provide a central place for “Canadian” news on IGD.
In Canadian Tire Fire, you can expect to find news on anarchist actions, Indigenous struggle, land and environmental defense, anti-fascism, borders, labour, police, prisons, and more. We aim to provide regular updates on news from across the country, from an anarchist perspective. We may also occasionally publish more in-depth analysis on ongoing struggles.
The Canadian state claims a vast area, and has a fairly dispered population compared to our neighbours to the south. Explicitly anarchist news can at times be harder to come by, but there is no shortage of resistance, nor of authoritarian violence and oppression to resist against.
In particular, Canada is shaped by a violent history and ongoing project of settler colonialism, from which some of the most compelling anti-state, anti-authoritarian struggle emerges. This history is an important context for any news from this part of the world.
We welcome tips on news stories from all corners of so-called Canada. If you’d like to get in touch, email us at canadiantirefire@riseup.net. You can also find us on twitter at @CdnTireFire.
With all that said, let’s get to this week’s news!
Rolling Blockade in Kanehsatà:ke
Photo credit: The Action Network
On May 22, the group Kanehsata:Ke Land Defence held a rolling blockade to protest ongoing land development pressures on the community. Community members and allies made up a blockade of around 100 cars and stopped at sites throughout the community, ending at the site of a housing development near the Pines. The Mohawk community of Kanehsata:ke has a long tradition of asserting their right to the land and fighting back against development, one notable example being the Oka Crisis of 1990.
As reported by No Borders Media, this blockade focused in particular on the suburban housing developer Grégoire Gollin, who has threatened to cut down trees in the Pines. In a speech, spokesperson Ellen Gabriel stated:
We call upon Prime Minister Trudeau to declare a moratorium upon all development and to sit down with the Rotinonhseshá:ka or Haudenosaunee, Peoples of the Longhouse. The traditional government upon which the women are not only vested as the titleholders of our Homelands, but also have an obligation to protect the land.
From Prime Minister Trudeau, Premier Francois Legault, to Mr. Gregoire Gollin, Mayor Pascal Quevillon, and the Mohawk Council of Kanesatake, they have disrespected the Kanien’kehá:ka of Kanehsatà:ke, in particular the women of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation. We have tried the peaceful methods to bring resolution to our land conflict but our voices incessantly fall upon deaf ears. The economy trumps the inherent human rights of Indigenous peoples. We are constantly squeezed into smaller parcels of land. Our community is unable to overcome the impacts of the dysfunction of colonialism which Canada and Quebec benefit from.
1492 Land Back Lane Spokesperson Turns Himself In, Three More Arrests in Connection with Ongoing Occupation
Further west in Haudenosaunee territory, on May 19th, Skyler Williams, spokesperson for #1492LandBackLane, turned himself in to the police after living with outstanding warrants related to the occupation for 10 months. Skyler told media that he made the decision so that he would be able to go back to work to support his four kids, saying he would continue to support and advocate for the camp. He was accompanied by a caravan of supporters to ensure that the Ontario Provincial Police would release him immediately as promised.
1492 Land Back Lane is an occupation of a site slated for a settler housing development called McKenzie Meadows. The occupation has been ongoing since July 19, 2020. Since Land Back Lane was established, dozens have been arrested in connection to the site. In the past weeks alone three other people from Six Nations, the reserve adjacent to the site, have been arrested on warrants nearly a year old for participation in land defense actions.
Despite the ongoing repression, the occupation continues, with 25 fruit trees newly planted at the site and the one year anniversary of the beginning of the occupation drawing near. For updates, follow @1492lbl on twitter.
Tiny House Warriors Found Guilty in Court Ruling
On May 21, siblings and founders of the Tiny House Warriors movement Kanahus and Mayuk Manuel were found guilty of theft and intimidation, respectively, in B.C. provincial court. Tiny House Warriors is a group committed to stopping the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline across unceded Secwepemc territory, through direct action. One of group’s primary tactics involves building tiny homes in strategic locations along the pipeline route. Participants have faced repeated criminalization for their actions. As reported by APTN, this latest charge stems from an interaction with security personnel outside a Trans Mountain pumping station in September 2019.
Mayuk and two other members of the Tiny House Warriors were in court the following week, related to charges laid in December 2018. Mayuk, Snutetkwe Manuel and Isha Jules were charged with mischief, causing a disturbance and assault as they interrupted a private meeting between federal politicians, government staff, regional First Nations leaders, representatives of Trans Mountain, and security personnel. The group pled not guilty to all charges, and in the first week of trial, Isha Jules was acquitted on one assault charge.
Fairy Creek Forest Defense
Photo credit: @SaveFairyCreek
It’s been an extremely eventful few weeks at the Fairy Creek blockade on Vancouver Island. Forest defense has been ongoing in the area since last summer, when the Rainforest Flying Squad established a series of blockades to stop the logging of old-growth forest in the Fairy Creek watershed, one of the largest remaining areas of old growth in North America. Teal Jones, the largest privately-owned timber harvesting and lumber product manufacturing company in B.C., has been granted a permit to log in the area. The area is part of unceded Pacheedaht territory.
On May 17, RCMP gave protesters 24 hours’ notice to vacate the area or be arrested, and from there, conflict has escalated significantly. Protesters have employed a variety of creative tactics to hold blockade positions along logging roads, where the threat of clear-cutting is imminent. Activists have chained themselves into fallen trees, suspended structures, into the ground, and to other infrastructure. Some have also hung in platforms suspended from trees, and were arrested by helicopter. Over 170 arrests have been made so far. At the same time, over a thousand people have joined the protests, including seniors, youth, Indigenous folks and allies.
As of June 4, organizers announced that 10 plainclothes RCMP officers breached Waterfall Camp, and that road building equipment is on its way to Fairy Creek. An urgent call-out has been issued for supporters to join forest defenders at Fairy Creek Headquarters. Those who can’t join are being encouraged to hold solidarity actions.
Discovery of Bodies of 215 Indigenous Children in Residential School Mass Grave Sparks Vigils across Country
Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced on May 29th that the bodies of 215 children had been found in a mass grave following a ground-penetrating radar survey on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in so-called British Columbia. The residential school was operated by the Catholic Church from 1890 to 1969, at which point the Canadian government took over to administer the building as residences for a day school until 1978. Residential schools, the last of which closed in 1996, were a central tool in the genocidal attempt by Canada to separate Indigenous children from their families and communities and raise them without access to their cultures and languages. Indigenous people have always maintained that there was mass undocumented abuse and death at the schools.
In response to the announcement, vigils, memorials, and demonstrations have been held across the country. Many memorials placed children’s shoes at significant sites, statues, and government buildings to represent the kids whose bodies were found. At Ryerson University, a sit in was held at the graffitied statue of Egerton Ryerson, an architect of the residential school system, calling for the statue’s removal. The Charlottetown city council has voted to permanently remove a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald from a downtown intersection in response to the revelations, reversing their previous vote not to remove it and instead to add an Indigenous figure to it. Anishinaabek in anishinaabek aki (Central and Northern Ontario) are calling for Indigenous people across Canada to #HaltTransCanada on June 21, National Indigenous People’s Day, in response to the news.
In response to public outcry about the discovery, the provincial and federal governments have issued statements and called for flags to be lowered to half mast. However, many are drawing attention to the hypocrisy of these actions given that Canada is simultaneously headed towards trial in a lawsuit by 105 First Nations seeking reparations for harms to First Nation cultures, languages and communities caused by residential schools. The federal government denies responsibility in court filings.
Palestinian Solidarity Rail Blockade in Mississauga
On May 30, hundreds of protesters blockaded rail tracks at the Lisgar GO transit station in Mississauga, in solidarity with Palestine. In an escalation of the many pro-Palestinian solidarity rallies taking place across the country in recent weeks, protesters blocked commuter traffic and demanded an arms embargo on Israel. Protesters dispersed after three hours without any arrests. As pointed out in further IGD coverage, this action shows a promising continuation of a tactic that gained prominence last year during the Shut Down Canada movement.
Mi’kmaq Fishers Forced to Scale Back Operations while COVID Restrictions in Effect
Mi’kmaq fishers, who last September faced settler violence in response to their lobster fishing operations, are currently dealing with a government clampdown on their fishing. While Mi’kmaq have a treaty right to fish for a “moderate livelihood”, the federal Fisheries Department has been actively removing any traps that are not licensed.
As reported in the Toronto Star, the Sipekne’katik First Nation in Nova Scotia has announced that it will modify its plans to launch a “moderate livelihood” fishery in June, instead scaling back to a “smaller food, social and ceremonial fishery.” Because June is outside of the federal commercial season, fishers had been warned that any commercial operation would result in their traps being seized.
Fishers also noted that when COVID restrictions ease up, they would feel empowered to expand their fishing with more supporters being able to travel to the wharf in Saulnierville from the Halifax area.
Fascist Calgary Mayoral Candidate Denied Access to Voters List
The current brand of far-Right personalities have been using election candidacies to gain power and notoriety over the last few years, and many anti-fascists have spoken up about the about the dangerous platforms and power this risks providing them. Recently, in Calgary, Alberta, a new related threat has emerged. A current Calgary mayoral candidate, fascist, grifter and failed Mississauga mayoral candidate, Kevin J. Johnston, has been threatening Alberta Health Services (AHS) employees for their role in the occasional enforcement of the province’s public health act during the pandemic. Johnston has said he will release the names and addresses of AHS employees and threatened to show up at their homes, armed.
The city of Calgary usually creates a list of voters and gives it to each candidate a month before the election. The list contains names, addresses and phone numbers of each voter. As reported by the Calgary Herald, because of the threats made by Johnston, city staff have said they have not yet created that list and have no plans to do so. The list is not mandatory in Alberta, so not every municipality creates a list, or does so every year.
Comments Off on Noise, Flags, and Fists: Reflections on a Weekend in Downtown Montréal
May222021
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Since May 6 of this year, apparently first with respect to the Sheikh Jarrah property dispute, there has been an intercommunal conflict between neighbours in ethnically mixed urban parts of occupied Palestine, from Jerusalem to Jaffa and beyond. Consequently, there has been an uneven exchange of bombs and rockets between the Israeli state and Hamas, the latter being the state authority in the small territory of Gaza. Where things will go in Palestine, I cannot say. I don’t pretend to have more than a Wikipedia-level understanding of the situation. I do not speak the relevant languages and am not trying to follow the news too closely anyway.
My reflections concern the situation in Montréal, home to sizeable populations of both Muslims and Jews, many of whom, respectively – and I understand that this is quite reductive – bolster the ranks of local social movements in support of both the Palestinian side and the Zionist/Israeli side of the conflict. This past weekend, a part of both movements took the streets of downtown Montréal in response to the most recent events overseas.
On Saturday, May 15, tens of thousands (at a minimum) of people came out in support of the Palestinian side; they demonstrated both at Westmount Square, an office tower complex that is home to the Israeli consulate, and in Dorchester Square, more or less in the central part of downtown. The entire zone in between those two locations was, for hours, convulsed with people waving the Palestinian flag, shouting slogans, and honking horns. It must have certainly been one of the largest demonstrations that has taken place in Montréal in the last year. There was little violence or vandalism, although a window was broken at Westmount Square and some people climbed scaffolding on a building adjoining Dorchester Square. All of this was preceded by a motorcade that started on the other side of town. Some anarchists and “radical leftists” without close family ties to any sort of Muslim community were present, but seemingly not many, in comparison to the rest of the crowd.
On Sunday, May 16, the pro-Israeli side had its own rally – that is, a static event – in Dorchester Square, which was opposed by a roughly equivalent number of people in a pro-Palestinian crowd that gathered initially in Place du Canada, directly to the south of Dorchester Square. From my own observations, I think it is fair to say that some people on the pro-Palestine side were deliberately provocative with respect to the pro-Israeli crowd, doing their best to get close to them and wave flags and stuff of that nature. The police attempted to keep both sides from coming into conflict with one another, but the logistics of their operation degraded over time, and there were several moments when members of both crowds were able to get close enough to each other to throw fists, try to steal each other’s flags, etc. Although the absolute number of people was much smaller than the day before, the area of downtown around Dorchester Square at least (and particularly on the nearby section of rue Sainte-Catherine, a major commercial artery that always has a lot of foot traffic) was gummed up with the movements of pro-Palestinian demonstrators trying to get to Dorchester Square or Place du Canada, then with members of the pro-Israeli crowd trying to leave the area, and certainly with police. Tear gas was deployed quite indiscriminately, affecting numerous bystanders and passers-by that had nothing to do with the unfolding skirmishes and attempts to fight each other. Pro-Palestinian groups remained in the vicinity for many hours after the pro-Israeli side had dispersed completely, defying the police, getting chased, and getting shot at with “less-than-lethal” munitions.
This weekend was preceded by numerous, significantly smaller pro-Palestine protests in the broad area of Montréal’s western downtown, which were less openly defiant of the police, but still loud and visible. It is my tentative prediction that more demonstrations will happen locally in the coming days. [Update: Between when I started writing this text, and when I submitted for publication on anarchist websites, another rally at the Israeli consulate came and went.]
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY Images resonate. Words inspire. People in the stadium love it when the audience roars in their favour. I think it might work the same way, at least a little bit, with struggle. But I don’t know for sure.
I do know that the violence that happened in Montréal on Saturday and Sunday – whether interpersonal or simply defenestrative, whether against the police or between partisans of competing nationalisms – did not materially help out anyone, from either national camp, in Palestine. It is perfectly unclear, to me, how many people in Palestine heard about what happened in Montréal at all. There have been demonstrations in cities all around the world, but I presume they are, in any case, paying more attention to local news.
Anarchists in Montréal have occasionally demonstrated at the consulate of a foreign government in Montréal. We have done other things too. The Russian consulate, specifically, was attacked at least twice in the last decade.
Most of the time, though, demonstrations of solidarity with people involved in some sort of overseas political issue has been by communities of people who have family in those places. They happen all the time, although few Montréalers will ever hear about them. They don’t tend to be very large, most of the time, and it is unlikely that they will be reported upon in the news. You have to be in the right place at the right time to see a banner, a sombre speech (perhaps in a language other than English or French), and usually about 60 people tops. Even when they are bigger, they rarely become riotous (and it is worth noting that, despite isolated moments of rowdy energy, the Saturday demonstration was overwhelmingly nonviolent).
The problem with campaigns of international solidarity is that, pretty frequently, they distract attention from projects that are more locally pertinent. I feel like I can get myself into trouble here, so let me be clear: I don’t think they are without value. But I do think, quite categorically, that it is generally disadvantageous when people know more about the latest events happening in a place far away than they do about the events that are happening in their own city. When they have a narratively simple understanding of events and the lead-up to those events in societies on the other side of the world, but they don’t understand, or at least fail to recognize, the tensions and dynamics that are manifest in their own social context.
International solidarity may sometimes be for the people far away, but it also needs to be for the people who are doing it. For anarchists, it is imperative that these campaigns of struggle feed into strategies that are about making anarchy – or other projects that align with what anarchists want – happen locally, whatever that might concretely mean.
MONTRÉAL RIOTS The above header is a verb. Montréal riots, and does so with some regularity. In the present context, after more than a year of the pandemic and several months of curfew imposed by a government sitting in Québec City and elected by the suburbs, that current is bubbling up again. If it wasn’t this issue, it would be something else.
There are a lot of sweeping claims to make about demographics, which I’ll just get out of the way now. First of all, it is usually young men who riot, and while this need not be inevitable, it is what seems to happen, insofar as I have been able to infer the gender identities of people I’ve seen smashing windows, looting stores, throwing things at police, or trying to get closer to pro-Israelis rallies in the last year. Second of all, it seems that racialized people are as likely if not more likely than white people to riot.
Really, I am bringing up demography to dismiss it as a concern. If people riot, as they did on the evening of April 11 in the context of the curfew’s intensification, then certain progressive journalists and commentators will label the participants “white” as a matter of course – which is exactly what happened. And, for the people who have deemed anarchist scenes themselves to be hopelessly problematic, including those who remain adjacent to those scenes, they are going to see some big problems with any engagement I might offer – as well as any failure to engage on my part – with respect to the fact that, broadly speaking, the participants in a given riot might be markedly browner, poorer, or more marginalized than the people who populate anarchist scenes.
To the extent that this becomes a distraction from, or an argument against, contributing to a youth-led social rupture, I think it’s a serious problem.
In Montréal, everyone riots. Not everyone everyone, but a lot of people, across many demographics. And people here have been rioting for a very long time. This city has an esteemed history of fucking shit up that goes back deep into the early decades of the 19th century. This continues through all sorts of political cycles and social crises, at times when white people of various kinds comprised the near totality of Montréal’s urban population, and certainly a much greater proportion of the population than is the case today. This is something that every Montréaler who hates the police and loves the culture of the streets can and should take pride in. This is not to say that every riot has been pure or perfect, but that there is more to celebrate in all of these histories than there is to condemn. Riots, after all, work. To the extent that we enjoy living in welfare capitalism versus, like, whatever they have in Texas, it is in part thanks to riots, and I think a little more sustained rioting now could get us a lot more stuff further down the line.
Being who we are, we don’t necessarily need to form a “contingent” within someone else’s demo. With respect to the most confrontational and defiant elements in the pro-Palestine street movement right now, we are talking about crews that most of us don’t have connections with, that we may not know how to talk to, where a relationship of trust doesn’t yet exist between us, and which are in any case entirely capable of doing things on their own. Our goal, instead, should be to expand the scope of the disruption to downtown commerce and police logistics, at the same time but not in precisely the same place as other events. We should want to be our own pole, which can attract different participants than those who would already come out to pro-Palestine stuff, and which can also preoccupy the strategic imperative of the police, which is to be everywhere at once. The job of the police is always impossible, but by being present, we can make that impossibility show itself faster.
There were glimpses of a total breakdown of police logistics and police strategy on Sunday, in the context of operations to stop just two relatively small cohorts of people from fighting one another. Every little bit of extra chaos counts.
A SUGGESTION: À BAS LA FRANCE Apart from Jews and Muslims, Montréal is also home to a sizeable population of French people – that is, not francophones, but people born and/or raised in France, or who at least have close family ties to people living in France. Many anarchists I have known who lived in Montréal were themselves French. Additionally, lots of other Montréal anarchists, who are not exactly “French” themselves, have spent a lot of time in France, have close friends there, opinions about political issues that are local to France, etc. Although France is far away, it is emotionally close to many of us (but certainly not all of us).
France has banned demonstrations in support of the Palestinian cause, citing the disturbances that happened in 2014, during the last big crisis.
What is happening in France is worrying. Already in 2016, in response to the jihadists’ massacres the year before (Charlie Hebdo, Hypercasher, the Bataclan, the Stade de France), the French state embarked on a path that included the banning of demonstrations, emergency laws, and the expansion of police powers. In the last month, it was made illegal to film the police. Of course, in our territory, French models of governance are much-admired; policies devised there will get imported here. We can see this, too, in the orientation of the government in Québec City’s efforts to suppress all things labelled radical and all things labelled Islamic – two categories which, very often, get conflated.
Between trying to beat up nationalist clowns wearing Israeli flag capes, and kicking in the window at Westmount Square, I personally thought the latter was the more respectable action; I know that many of the clowns were spoiling for a fight, too, but I don’t love angry interpersonal violence. The French consulate is in a building facing avenue McGill College, a few short blocks away from Dorchester Square. Maybe it would make sense for anarchists, and all other opponents of colonialism and capitalism writ large, to call our own demonstration at that location if it ever looks like pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian crowds are about to throw down again downtown. Or hell, somewhere else? But everyone loves a theme!
Really, though: whatever excuse it takes to get us downtown so that we contribute to the disruption and create a larger space of destruction, possibility, and encounter of the kind that is only possible when there is a complete breakdown of the logistical machine that is the police.
THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT Teenagers have analyses, but they might not be very good. Most of them don’t know what anarchism is, what nationalism is. They might know the words, but that doesn’t count for much. Most of them don’t have a clear or cogent idea about Jews or Palestinians or Zionists or terrorists or whatever. And it’s not like teenagers are necessarily doing the things they are doing entirely because of their political ideas, either.
All of this is true of most adults, too, but teenagers usually have better excuses for why they don’t know about any of these things than adults do, and it’s usually worth trying to explain these things to them, because they probably aren’t lost causes yet. But not by seeking them out to tell them these things. That’s never gonna work.
You cannot have conversations with people about ideas until it is clear that you even want to talk to each other. That is true for both parties. But it is impossible to know whether you want to talk to each other – really talk, with all the risk of misunderstanding and insult that exists in any conversation with stakes – until there is a good reason for you to talk.
If people see each other in the streets, consistently, they will probably start to talk at some point. Particularly if people in both groups seem to sort of be doing the same weird thing as one another, in a way that is complementary. Maybe cool things come out of that, or maybe they don’t. I feel like it would be a good thing, though, if some kid whose family talks a lot of shit about Jews was able to find out that there are Jews who are anarchists, who hate the police, who incidentally don’t much like Israel, who have style and/or know how to throw down.
The point is not to go into the streets to “make anarchists” but, instead, to make anarchy. Most anarchists, after all, eventually become social-democrats. Most of the people in any crowd of angry, activated youth are unlikely to find that anarchism, in whatever subcultural form it may take, is able to speak to them or their particular concerns. So be it. It’s after anarchy triumphs in some way, perhaps in part because the partisans of anarchy were in the streets as well, that some people will start to pay attention. Some people will like what they see, and may try to find us. It’s not worth thinking about much, though. All of that is outside of what we can plan for.
What we can do is recognize where new energy is, how and where why it is bubbling up, and we can also think about where we want to place ourselves in relation to it. What are we trying to do? How are we trying to help? What does it mean for us when police logistics are tied up downtown?
ANARCHY, NOT THE RIOT If events must take the form of running battles with the police in the downtown core, then anarchists have something to contribute to that situation. But we can do other things, too. The point is not to fetishize the riot or the people who are doing the most to actualize the riot in the present moment. The point is that the path to where we are trying to go, where the police are gone, passes through rioting. C’est pas les pacifistes qui vont changer l’histoire.
The point is that we do things, that we don’t sit out insurrectional moments, and that we keep our principal focus on what is happening in our own region. The terrain is shifting, and it’s hard to keep track, but we need to do our best.
AGAINST THE CURFEW. AGAINST THE BOMBING. AGAINST EVICTIONS HERE AND EVERYWHERE. FOR A WORLD WITHOUT POLICE. LET BLACK FLAGS FLY HIGH.
For the week of Monday, May 17th, Palestinians are calling for a week of action in solidarity with their national uprising and general strike. Please take action to support those fighting against apartheid and modern colonialism.
#savesheikhjarrah #gazaunderattack #freepalestine
Voiceover by Nader Haram, music by John Prod. Produced in collaboration with Antimidia.
Comments Off on R.I.P. Matt Cicero: Anarchist Militant, Journalist, Community Organizer
Apr222021
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
On March 16, 2020, our comrade Matt departed for the spirit world. We have lost one of the most committed anarchists in our part of the world, and the loss is felt intensely due to the tragic circumstances of his death.
Many people who did not know Matt well will probably remember him as the guy that bombed the bank back in 2010. At this time, there was a major mobilization of anarchists preparing for the G20 summit in Toronto. Several months prior to the summit, a group calling itself FFF (Fighting For Freedom) released footage of the firebombing of an RBC branch in Ottawa. The footage was dramatic – a black-clad figure runs out of the bank minutes before it explodes in flame.
Although he never confessed to the action, I think that Matt would have wanted to be remembered for this action. He was arrested for it, jailed, and put on trial, but charges were dropped due to insufficient evidence. Six years after the bombing, he posted an article entitled “6 reasons I support arson (as a tool of social change)” on his blog. “I think it’s an example… of direct action, and I think that social movements in Canada are far too pacified, they are way too comfortable with the ideology, with non-violence as an ideology, not as a tactic, but as the only possible way forward,” he said. “I think social movements need to become more militant and I wanted to highlight that, which I think the action does.”
The communique released by FFF explained the reasons why RBC had been targeted. They had been a major sponsor of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, which had involved a massive crack-down on the street population of that city, and RBC was also a major financier of the Alberta Tar Sands.
It’s important to note here that Matt was one of the anarchists who was at the forefront of indigenous solidarity organizing. 2010 really was the year that anti-colonial politics came to the forefront of anarchist analysis in so-called Canada. It was through the relationships that anarchists formed with indigenous people around that time that began to significantly shift anarchist discourse. Matt was one of the pioneers of this, and he remained active with IPSMO (the Indigenous People’s Solidarity Movement – Ottawa) for the better part of a decade.
Matt was a committed activist. Serious, principled, and intense, he knew what he believed and had the courage of his convictions. His stubbornness often led to him butting heads with other activists, as for myself, I usually found myself agreeing with him and supporting his stance. He thought that radical politics should be about action. When it was time to throw down, you knew Matt was game.
It is difficult to grieve Matt, partly due to the tragic conditions of his death. I have not spoken to anyone who had really spoken to him in the past two years. Not only was he estranged from his family, it seems that he was also estranged from his friends. It would seem that his mental health deteriorated, and he was living in a tent by the Ottawa river, close to the War Museum, and not far from Asinabka, the Algonquin sacred site currently be desecrated by a huge condo development.
The circumstances of his death were mysterious. Apparently, the police told his mother that he had fallen out of a tree. I was a part of a group that visited the tree, and we all agreed that it just wasn’t possible that that had happened. Not only was the tree not very tall, it was a spruce tree, and it would have been impossible to climb without breaking branches, and no branches were broken. What is known is that he died of blunt force trauma and the police didn’t rule it a suicide.
We are still trying to put the pieces together, so if you do have information that would help us understand what happened in the last two years of his life, we would encourage you to write us. Even though we can’t change what happened, understanding what happened can be an important part of the grieving process.
We also have some soul-searching as a movement to do. There have been a significant numbers of deaths of despair amongst activist men in the past few years. To name a few: Derek, Dave, Hugo, Jean, and Charles. What is leading our comrades to such depths of emotional pain? Is it the state of the world, or it is something about the way that activists treat each other?
The reality is that, despite our best efforts to change the world for the world, things are not improving on planet Earth, and in fact, many of the gains made by previous generations of activists are now being undone. This can be deeply disheartening, especially for people who have based their whole lives around struggling to make the world a better place.
There is another question that is more disturbing, and that is whether it is something in the activist scene is killing us. Has the anarchist culture become deeply toxic? Both Dave and Matt were being excluded by their respective activist communities at the times of their deaths. In both cases, it seems likely that this was a factor in the deterioration of their mental health. Is a toxic activist culture partly to blame?
In any case, Matt’s body is gone, but his spirit has moved on. Perhaps the freedom that he desired so passionately was not possible in this world, but I hope that where he is now, his spirit will know true freedom.
Rest in peace, Matt, you were a good anarchist, and I will honour your memory. More importantly, I will honour your spirit by continuing the fight that you dedicated your life to – the fight for freedom, for autonomy, for Mother Earth, and in solidarity with the oppressed against the state.
It seems right to end by quoting the FFFC communique released after the bank bombing:
We pass the torch to all those who would resist the trampling of native rights, of the rights of us all, and resist the ongoing destruction of our planet.
A memorial is being organized by Matt’s friend Albert Dumont, an Algonquin spiritual leader. It will be held on May 16. By pure coincidence, a massive global day of action happens to be planned for that exact day. So, wherever you are, if you do want to honour Matt’s memory, consider torching or smashing something in his honour, or at least lighting off some fireworks.
For details regarding the memorial service, please write vertetnoire@riseup.net. If you have photos or videos of Matt, please share them with us. We would also encourage people to reach out to share their memories of Matt, which could be shared at his memorial.
A song-in-progress is being written by Matt’s friend. If you have memories of actions that Matt participated in, and want them to be part of a song that will be sung at his memorial, please check out this video: https://youtu.be/-BjzjBghTf8 and get in touch.
We are a group of people who, back in february 2020, held an all-day railroad blockade in so-called Lennoxville, Quebec, on stolen Abenaki land, in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en land defenders and against the ongoing violence of colonialism. We have recently learned that the criminal accusations that had been laid against us have finally been withdrawn and that our case has been closed.
On the one hand, it brings us joy to avoid the stress and hassle of a criminal trial, and even moreso considering how the Sherbrooke police shamelessly lied to us and broke their own protocols in order to arrest us on that sunny winter day.
On the other hand, however, we find it important to remember and acknowledge that the criminal charges we were facing come from a State (and its whole legal system) that sees nothing wrong with colonial genocide, with murdering and dispossessing indigenous folks, and with destroying life in the name of profit. So-called Canada and so-called Quebec are on stolen native land, and no amount of laws or repression will ever make us see this as fair or acceptable. Our action was one of many others in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en people who have been continuously threatened and harassed by the RCMP and pipeline industry goons.
The funds we had raised for our legal battle will be split evenly between the lawyers who supported us, the Tyendinaga and Hamilton friends who are facing trial for their own solidarity blockades, as well as the Unist’ot’en Camp Legal Fund.
Comments Off on Queen Victoria Statue Vandalized with Red Paint After Curfew on Saint-Patrick’s Day
Mar192021
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Delhi-Dublin Anti-Colonial Solidarity Brigade declares: End the monarchy in Canada; end monarchies everywhere!
March 17, 2021, Montreal — The Delhi-Dublin Anti-Colonial Solidarity Brigade re-united in Montreal last night on an anti-colonial Saint-Patrick’s Day. They defied curfew to again vandalize the landmark bronze statue to Queen Victoria — unveiled in 1900 and located on Sherbrooke Street at McGill University — this time in red paint.
According to Pádraig Patel of the Delhi-Dublin Anti-Colonial Solidarity Brigade: “There is a renewed focus on the brutal legacy of the British monarchy, which is a clear symbol of racism and colonialism. Forget about celebrity distractions, let’s focus on getting rid of monarchs as one important action linked to our movements for social justice.”
Another member of the brigade, Sujata Sands, mentions: “We do regret that we were unable to topple the statue tonite, as those cool kids did back in August 2020 to the John A. Macdonald statue.”
A third member of the Delhi-Dublin Anti-Colonial Solidarity Brigade, Lakshmi O’Leary, declared: “Just put the British Royal Family, all of them, into a limousine, give them a drunk French chaffeur, and let nature take its course.”*
Concerning the Queen Victoria statue, the Delhi-Dublin Anti-Colonial Solidarity Brigade wrote on St. Patrick’s Day 2019: “The presence of Queen Victoria statues in Montreal are an insult to the self-determination and resistance struggles of oppressed peoples worldwide, including Indigenous nations in North America (Turtle Island) and Oceania, as well as the peoples of Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, the Indian subcontinent, and everywhere the British Empire committed its atrocities. Queen Victoria’s reign, which continues to be whitewashed in history books and in popular media, represented a massive expansion of the barbaric British Empire. Collectively her reign represents a criminal legacy of genocide, mass murder, torture, massacres, terror, forced famines, concentration camps, theft, cultural denigration, racism, and white supremacy. That legacy should be denounced and attacked.”
Some previous attacks on Queen Victoria statues in Montreal:
* Henri Paul was the driver of the luxury Mercedes with Lady Diana that crashed in Paris in 1997. Every member of the British monarchy deserves a drunk French driver!
There are currently at least sixty people still facing serious criminal charges from the 2019 and 2020 raids on Wet’suwet’en territory and the solidarity movement known as Shut Down Canada. Dealing with criminal charges is often an isolating and scary experience, especially when the legal system intentionally tries to make people feel alone and powerless. We think a support campaign is the best way we can fight back against these forces and show the state that we will not allow our friends and comrades to be criminalized. If we can support one another now, then we can support one another in all the struggles to come.
More than avoiding repression, what matters is how we deal with it. We need to always be finding ways to show those targeted they are not alone — this makes it easier for them to get through it with strength and integrity. As people move through the justice system, displays of solidarity and practical support make a real difference in the outcome. We need to show that those who are brave and take risks will be supported if we want to be brave together again in the future and see our movements grow.
We want to provide a space where defendants can write about their experiences with repression and criminalization, statements of solidarity, and updates about the charges, which will be posted on our Updates section.
We want to help defendants to fund raise for their legal battles, where we provide links to different defendants and communities’ GoFundMe pages.
We want to help defendants feel more supported in the incredibly isolating process of state criminalization, and are offering a PO box where letters of support, postcards, and zines can be sent, which we we then forward to defendants.
And, finally, we want to create an email campaign to pressure for charges to be dropped or for prominent figures to publicly support charges being dropped. We have created a basic sample template for a (polite) email, and a list of talking points that defendants have given us, and compiled a list of emails for it to be sent to.
Please share this campaign on your various data-mining surveilance platforms and use the hashtag #BlockadeDefense
Comments Off on Solidarity with land defenders at 1492LBL
Feb282021
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Since July 2020, Haudenosaunee land defenders of Six Nations have blocked a housing development called Mackenzie Meadows slated for construction on Six Nations territory, near the settler community of Caledonia, Ontario. Land defenders refusing to see their lands further destroyed for colonial interests occupied the construction site last summer, renaming it 1492 Land Back Lane. Following the re-occupation of their territory, an injunction was granted to Mackenzie Meadows and enforced by the OPP in August. Land defenders fought back against the OPP’s violent eviction, temporarily retreating from the site. Shortly after the raid, land defenders backed by the community of Six Nations blockaded Argyle Road and Highway 6, and re-took Land Back Lane from the fucking police. In October last year, the police attempted to arrest a number of land defenders, shooting some with ‘non-lethal’ projectiles. The police were ultimately chased off by determined land defenders, having some of their cruisers fucked up on the way out. This last violent attack by the OPP led land defenders and Six Nations community members to tear up Argyle road, disrupt CN rail lines running through their lands, and erect barricades in order to defend themselves from further police attacks.
On February 15, 1492 Land Back Lane land defenders completed their roll-back of various barricades in order to allow Six Nations community members access to the highway. While the road barricades have been removed, land defenders remain committed to their goals, vigilant of violent repression by the OPP, and aware that they are now in a more vulnerable position. This past fall, anarchists and accomplices responded to calls for solidarity by the land defenders of 1492 Land Back Lane with actions against infrastructure critical to the Canadian economy.
We continue to stand in solidarity with 1492 Land Back Lane, and invite all who envision a world without colonial domination to stay abreast of the situation on the ground and continue to support the land defenders. Should the OPP attempt to take advantage of the land defenders’ increased vulnerability to bring violence to 1492 Land Back Lane, the response must be swift and expansive. In preparation for this possibility, we urge anti-colonial accomplices and allies to make plans to take action against the state and capital, calling on the lessons of the #ShutDownCanada movement of last winter.
In solidarity with the land defenders of 1492 Land Back Lane! Fuck Canada, fuck the OPP!
It was winter 2020 and in the aftermath of the most inspiring anti-colonial uprising of my lifetime, I read Rattachements[1] (Re-attachments in English) and Inhabit[2]. The trains had started up again across the country, and COVID-19 was starting to reorder our lives mere weeks after we had been doing our small part to help shut down Canada. In and around Tio’tia:ke (Montreal) where I live, there were many Indigenous-led initiatives, including solidarity rounddances that blocked traffic downtown, and of course the month-long blockade of the railway tracks that run through Kahnawá:ke. On and around the island, the engagement of settlers in #ShutDownCanada took a number of forms including clandestine sabotage of rail infrastructure, demos and vandalism of RCMP property, and multiple rail blockades, one of which lasted a few days.
Coming down off of these events, it was especially jarring to read the proposals in Inhabit and Rattachements. Both texts are representations of political thought coming out of communities in the US and Quebec that are heavily influenced by the writings of the Invisible Committee in France and European Autonomist movements. This political tendency is sometimes labelled tiqqunist, appelist, or autonomist. It is a political orientation that has a significant amount of sway among a segment of those who were engaged in the settler-initiated[3] portions of the organizing in Montreal last winter, and these two texts seem to be important reference points for these people. Unfortunately, the onset of COVID-19 stifled what could have been an opportunity for deeper analysis of some of the political differences between those of us who organized together that winter. I would like to clarify my disagreement with the anti-colonial strategy, or lack thereof, put forth by Inhabit and Rattachements. I hope that in future broad coalitional moments of solidarity like last winter, we might be able to better understand where our potential for collaboration could break down. I also hope that critical engagement with the analysis proposed by these texts will limit the extent to which it influences the contours of settler-initiated anti-colonial solidarity in years to come.
Rattachements
Taking issue with dominant currents of environmentalist action (on the one hand activists who ask the government to take action to save the environment, and on the other individuals changing their consumption practices to do the same) the writers of Rattachements propose a new approach to dealing with the ecological crisis and colonial capitalism. This new approach is one of building an “ecology of presence” through the construction of communes[4]. The writers see the project of reconnecting to that which “has been torn from them” as both material and spiritual. They wish to truly inhabit land from which to attack the machinery of capitalism while also building new forms of life there. Foundational to their understanding of the problem is an assertion that they did not choose to be thrown into a world bent on its own destruction, a world structured by colonial capitalism[5], wherein their “affects are captured” and their connection to the land has been severed.
The writers forward that “[d]efending the land necessarily means learning to inhabit it, truly inhabiting it necessitates defending it.” In doing so they assert that their reconnection to the land is a precursor and integral part of anti-colonial struggle. An “ecology of presence,” they write, can be found in the connections between Indigenous peoples and their territories, including the Zapatistas’ resistance against the Mexican government and the material and territorial autonomy of the Kanienʼkehá꞉ka. However, the writers are rejecting an analysis of social position from jump. They appear to not think that the position of subjects within systems of domination is relevant to their analysis or strategies of resistance to those systems. But the writers are nonetheless settlers speaking to (mostly) other settlers. The abstraction they employ is thus dangerous, as they go on to say that “it is when communities affirm that they themselves are part of the territory, of this forest, of this river, of this piece of the neighbourhood, and that they are ready to fight, that the political possibility of ecology appears clearly”. This statement can easily be seen as a call for settlers to understand themselves as belonging to the land in order to defend it, or at the very least, on a level playing field with Indigenous people when it comes to assertions of what the future of land in this place should resemble. Whether or not this is the intention, this opens the door to settler self-indigenization being understood as a decolonial strategy. In a settler colonial society like Quebec or Canada, the state exists in large part to secure settler access to land, and Indigenous people are always threats to that access. This is both the history and present of all settler societies. We need not look far to find examples where settlers relating to the land in a way that resembles Rattachements’ “ecology of presence” has already been put into practice effectively against Indigenous people.
Take, for example, the story of the white hunters in Mi’kma’ki (the Chic Choc Mountains in Gaspésie, specifically) who in 2004 had already grown frustrated about the incursion of logging in the area and who, having hunted on the land for quite some time and feeling rather connected to (even “of”) the territory, were faced with a new threat: the establishment of a “Mi’kmaq-controlled area which would offer outdoor activities for a fee” (a “pourvoirie”). This new project threatened their ability to hunt for free. In response to this, while meeting in a “communal tent” on the territory, the white hunters concocted a plan to identify as Indigenous in order to help add legitimacy to their claims of connection to the land. They founded an organization which would come to be named the Metis Nation of the Rising Sun, and successfully prevented the establishment of the pourvoirie. This story is not an outlier in our area, rather merely one example of a widespread phenomenon wherein settlers, feeling very attached to the land they are living on (and maybe even having some communal inclinations) feel moved to defend their control of it from threats that include Indigenous people who have their own pre-existing claims and relations to the same land. Often, this involves claiming an Indigenous identity, but it need not necessarily. What continues to be crucial for the advancement of settlement is the ongoing procurement of land by settlers and the entrenchment of the idea that this is our land, whether the possession is property based (I have the deed and so this is mine) or spiritual (I know the land, I feel connected to the land, and so I belong here).
Looking to other settler colonial contexts, we can see more examples of the risks of communal settlement undertaken with radical political aims. The Kibbutz movement in Palestine, for example, is a story of self-organized communes set up from the early 1900s onward, beginning with the second wave of Jewish settlers fleeing pogroms from Eastern Europe. The settlers of the first Kibbutz had anarchist ideals of egalitarianism, rejected the “exploitative socio-economic structure[6]” of the farms established by the first wave of settlement, and hoped to undermine the developing capitalist economy with their communes. They sought to establish “a cooperative community without exploiters or exploited[7]“, and did so in 1910 after gaining access to land “which had recently been bought by the Palestine Land Development Company from the Jewish National Fund.[8]” This first farm was such a success that “before long, kvutzot were being set up wherever land could be bought.[9]” These communes, while viewing themselves as a viable alternative and considerable threat to the capitalist mode of production, were also serving the Zionist settlement of Palestine. Today they are commonly understood as an important part of Israel’s national story, and approximately 270 settlements still exist (despite their internal organization and anarchist character having shifted significantly) in occupied territory. It is clear that while the anarchist and anti-capitalist ideals of such projects may be inspiring, the settler colonial context calls for attention to the impacts of settlement on Indigenous peoples, not merely the ideals or internal politics of communes[10].
Land Back vs. Back to the land
Rattachements emerges from and endorses an understanding that settlers too have been dispossessed – of connection to land, of spirituality and knowledge. It leans hard on this claim to try to get other settlers to feel moved to action. The zine, written within and circulating among social circles dominated by white settlers with varying radical politics, posits that a solution to the ecological crisis lies in these (again, primarily settler) milieus’ ability to create communes. These communes will then be able to establish material and political autonomy by rendering spaces (land, wastelands, buildings, churches, houses and parks) “liveable”[11]. In other words, they propose to settle and squat, communally, the land, whether it has already been built on by other settlers or not, asserting that this is a strategic necessity rather than merely a lifestyle choice.
I too believe that capitalism is a system which alienates us from each other and the living beings we depend upon. And yet I believe that we must be more specific: colonial capitalism has created a country wherein, by and large, settlers own land, and have the resources and relative freedom to build a variety of relationships with it. This comes at the expense of Indigenous peoples, who have been dispossessed of their land, and the languages, cultures, and spiritualities that emerge from and inform their relationships with that land. Rattachements suggests that a crucial part of the anti-capitalist/anti-colonial ecological struggle is shifting settlers’ affective and spiritual relationships with the land in a context where our material relationship with the land – one of ownership of that which has been stolen — remains unchanged and fundamentally colonial. A group of settlers buying a communal house together outside the city as part of a strategy of revolutionary ecology has little to nothing in common with Indigenous peoples reoccupying their traditional territories. The latter is a direct disruption of colonial development projects and environmental destruction and is recognizable as part of a lineage of Indigenous resistance to displacement and genocide.[12] The former misrecognizes itself as somehow sharing something with that lineage, when in fact it is possible because of, and shares much more with, generations of encroachment and expansion by settlers.
Absent from the program of ecological struggle proposed by Rattachements is an explicit call for the return of land to Indigenous communities. Instead, they call implicitly for an increased presence of their (settler) milieus on that land, in part in order to potentially support Indigenous struggles. Despite the acknowledgment that land has been stolen (and the lauding of Indigenous relationships to land as ones to look to as examples for the readers of the zine) what is missing is the proposition that “Land Back” in the literal, material sense, is an important piece of the ecological struggle, and one to prioritize leaps and bounds above settlers going back to the land. In the Land Back Red Paper released in 2019 by the Yellowhead Institute, the writers tell us that “the matter of Land Back is not merely a matter of justice, rights or ‘reconciliation’; Indigenous jurisdiction can indeed help mitigate the loss of biodiversity and climate crisis. […] Long-term stewardship of the land allows for constant reassessment, planning, and adaptation.” This leads to an efficacy of protection of biodiversity and hope against climate change thanks to the culturally specific world views passed intergenerationally through a presence with and in defense of the land.[13]
It must not be seen as a necessary precondition for decolonization that settlers develop relationships (spiritual or affective) with land that we occupy. Settlers deciding to prioritize building these new relationships with the land does not bring us closer to decolonization. Focusing on settlers’ spiritual or affective relationships to the land as an important part of anti-colonial struggles sidetracks and warps our ability to focus on the much more central problems of settler colonial Canada. The dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ lands is a partial but crucial piece of struggling against settler colonialism and climate change. Regardless of the politics of the settlers, our relationships with land are most often built through a tactic of land ownership, due to the relative ease of access to the financial means or social connections that allow for this. I am thinking, for example, about the many collective land projects that have been initiated by radical settlers in so-called Quebec, which all involve owning the land. To think of building a land-based spirituality on a foundation of land ownership does not make sense, these relationships would be colonial, not revolutionary. In other words, the relationship between settlers and land must change primarily on a material basis, not a spiritual or affective one. Indigenous peoples have articulated that “Land Back” will give them the power to rebuild knowledge, languages, culture, and autonomy. This is the substance of decolonization; it is crucial that Indigenous peoples be free to develop and regain their relationships with the land rather than settlers taking it upon ourselves to do it in their stead.
On Inhabit and settler territorial autonomy
In Inhabit, a text coming out of appelist/tiqqunist/autonomist networks in the so-called US, the desire for territory is expanded.The goal articulated in Inhabit is the extension and multiplication of the isolated communes of Rattachements. Yet unlike Rattachements, whose authors claim to be committed to their own understanding of an anti-colonial politics, Inhabit does not articulate an anti-colonial politic at all. This is not necessarily surprising, as anti-colonial politics seem to be less present in settler radical milieus in the US than in Canada, but it still matters.[14] “Our goal”, they say, “is to establish autonomous territories—expanding ungovernable zones that run from sea to shining sea. Faultlines crossing North America leading us to providence.” Like the westward expansionists of yore, the writers of Inhabit posit a better way to use the land and suggest that pockets not yet taken up in service for their revolution be transformed in their image. In other words, one can read the writers of Inhabit as promoting their vision of Manifest Destiny: the expansion of land use in their vision, faultlines moving unimpeded across a vast and unclaimed North America. Perhaps following the paths of the railroads that came before?
Inhabit’s authors seem unable or unwilling to engage with settler colonialism. With the exception of the mention of incidental interaction between settlers and Indigenous families in contexts where they are already comrades, race and colonialism are invisible in their text. The authors’ unwillingness to engage with the larger collectivities of Indigenous life and their settler colonial context betrays their colonial understanding of the land itself. In proposing territorial expansion without concern for the claims to land that cover this continent already[15], Inhabit calls to its readers with imagery of the settler state national project – from sea to shining sea: “Build the infrastructure necessary to subtract territory from the economy,” they urge. But the land has never been just territory, and settlers occupying it has more often looked like removing Indigenous peoples than subtracting it from the economy. One need only look to the southern US to see how, for example, white people squatting “vacant” land was an intended consequence of the process of allotting Indigenous people land far from their communities. The US banked on the fact that these communities would be unable to prevent squatters from setting in and taking possession. “Rent a space in the neighborhood. Build a structure in the forest. Take over an abandoned building or a vacant piece of land.” Inhabit repurposes thought and strategies from contexts highly unlike their own (squatters movements in europe, for example) and tries to implement supposedly liberatory strategies for “inhabiting” space that merely further entrench settler access to and control of land.
The flight from identity
In an October 2020 report-back called Chasse à la chasse[16] (translated as Hunting the Hunt in the English version published by Inhabit’s “Territories” newsletter), the writers (based in Quebec) give an account of their time spent supporting Anishnabe communities fighting for a moratorium on moose hunting in their territory. They conclude their summary of the situation with the following reflection: “It would be an illusion confining one to weakness to think that we cannot be and appear other than as illegitimate settlers, regardless of ‘how’ we intend to inhabit what is left of the world.”[17]
It is surprising to me that one of the most pressing takeaways from organizing in solidarity with an Indigenous community would be the possible escape from settler “identity” it uncovers. It seems to me that the fear of being seen as an “illegitimate settler” is what motivates some of their rejection of social position and in turn undermines their analysis. I don’t intend to say that the authors have nothing to contribute to anti-colonial struggle because they are settlers. Rather, I disagree with the importance being placed on not being perceived as settlers, instead of on evaluating what is the most effective contribution they could make to anti-colonial struggle. Their position as settlers in a settler society is necessarily going to be an important piece of this evaluation. This rejection of social position is visible in Inhabit in so far as race and colonialism are made invisible. In Rattachements, it is only visible as a thing from which the writers flee. “Ecstasy: bliss provoked by an exit, a departure from what has been produced as our ‘self’, our ‘social position,’ our ‘identity.’” In a hurry to reject identity politics, and in conflating “identity” with an attention to social position, the writers remove the lens that would allow them to analyze our context more fully and accurately. In doing so, they doom themselves to a flat and limited approach that says that if it is strategic and possible for Indigenous people to build territorial autonomy, it must be just as strategic, possible, and subversive, for settlers to do the same.
The St. Lambert rail blockade was a multi-day action called by and mostly attended by settlers last winter in the context of #ShutDownCanada. It was an opportunity for a proactive and explicit explanation of why we as settlers thought it important to respond to the call for solidarity actions in the way we did, and an encouragement of other settler radical milieus to do the same. This could have been very valuable in a context where some settler supporters were hesitant to propose or participate in settler-initiated actions[18]. Unfortunately, this proactive communication approach was not taken for a variety of reasons, including lack of political cohesion amongst the people organizing the action. In the end, communication coming out of the camp opted for vague language about who was there and who was being spoken to and missed an opportunity to speak as settlers to other settlers about what we could do to intervene[19]. Obfuscating our position made it easier for the mainstream media to use the fact that we were not Indigenous as a “gotcha” moment which helped them attempt to turn public opinion against us without using overtly racist tropes. Our lack of clear analysis also left space for Premier Francois Legault to separate us from the other blockades because we did not explain how we saw ourselves in relation to them. Of course the cops knew all along the demographics of those in attendance and acted accordingly. There were no tactical advantages to this approach, and we lost the opportunity to put forth clear, decisive analysis as to why other settlers should take the risks we (and many Indigenous communities) were taking at that time to shut down Canada. I worry that an avoidance of addressing head on issues of social position and the role of settlers in anti-colonial struggle may lead us to make similar choices in the future.
Inhabit and Rattachements share a desire to produce affect in their readers which inspire them to see themselves as full of power and possibility. Toward this end, they encourage readers to reject guilt or sacrifice and to understand themselves as central protagonists in struggle. For Rattachements, this looks like encouraging their readers to see themselves as “neither victims” of “nor guilty” for the ecological crisis. This aversion to self-sacrifice, to being ready to give something up, means denying that settler colonialism and some other drivers of the crisis continue to benefit us. This is the preemptive evasion of potential guilt for being a settler – we must not understand ourselves as the subjects for which the genocidal removal of Indigenous people from their land is ongoing. The impulse is tied to a rejection of identity politics, and while I do not suggest to instead embrace a demobilizing guilt in the face of the past and present horrors, I think it is both a strategic and ethical imperative to refuse to ignorethe conditions that produce this guilt. When we acknowledge the kinds of lives that settler colonialism continues to produce for settlers and try to find the causes for the clear disparity, we equip ourselves with the knowledge of our context necessary to change it in effective ways. When we flee the feelings produced by this disparity by rejecting a label, we may come to believe we can think or magic our way out of real structures. It is the conditions that need to be fought, not the emotions they produce.
Where do we go from here
The authors of Inhabit and Rattachements might think that rejecting, on the basis of demographics, their respective strategies of territorial autonomy or of building material autonomy in communes on the land is essentially a refusal to build power—a concession to the demobilizing effects of ally politics. On the contrary, I think this rejection is both an ethical and a strategic choice, from which we must necessarily develop a stronger and more anti-colonial revolutionary strategy. It does not weaken our movements to turn away from building territorial autonomy for primarily settler communities if what we turn towards is a greater focus on the continued rebuilding of territorial autonomy for Indigenous peoples we seek to be in struggle with. What is required is to not see settlers as the central subject of revolutionary anti-colonial struggle, and to recognize that the positions from which we struggle differ and thus the paths we take must also differ. Any serious analysis of Canadian settler colonialism will see the hundreds of years of Indigenous struggle against capitalism and the state as relevant and in many ways determinant of the chances of these communities’ potential success at building territorial autonomy. This same analysis will note the difference between this history of struggle and that of radical settler movements in so-called Canada.
If we talk about territorial autonomy in a serious sense, we will know it is far more than “a network of hubs” we’ve rented, squatted, or built in the forest, or a constellation of communal houses in the country. Territorial autonomy, if seen as a strategy for the destruction of capitalism and the state, includes the long term work of developing zones where cops cannot go, where the means to sustain and reproduce those who live there can be found, where a large group of committed and connected people of all ages has the means and the need to defend that territory, over generations. We can look to where this work has already been done for hundreds of years to see examples: Wet’suwet’en territory, Elsipogtog, Barriere Lake, Six Nations, Tyendinaga, Kahnawá:ke, and Kanehsatà:ke. This work has by and large not been done for hundreds of years by non-Indigenous communities – we are starting from zero, and thus even if prioritizing our own territorial autonomy seemed ethical, it would not be likely to be strategic because settler communities in a settler society have much less structural conflict with the colonial system. It does not make us weaker to prioritize the fight for the territorial autonomy of communities of which we are not a part. It makes us stronger, if by doing so we build relationships that contribute to revolutionary contexts in which the goals of settler revolutionary networks converge with those of anti-colonial Indigenous groups. Toward a stronger potential for joint struggle against the colonial state.
Our environmental politics must foreground material responses to the dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ land, for the sake of the planet and as part of a broader commitment to anti-colonial politics. It is dangerous to slip towards a “back to the land” politics, as Rattachements does, because these approaches and projects at best sidetrack us, and at worst set the stage for the development of twisted settler claims to Indigenous land. These kinds of claims will shatter the relationships we should seek with anti-colonial Indigenous allies, and risk strengthening settler reactionary tendencies that we should be fighting. If we see ourselves as aiming to engage in joint struggle with Indigenous communities against the colonial state, we will know that what makes our movements stronger is when our comrades are strong, and our relationships with them are strong.
If we focus on the material realities of settler colonialism and the real ways in which it continues to structure our lives, options, and resources, we can develop more effective strategies by asking what our differing social positions allow and disallow, and how we might put these differences to work for common goals. Mike Gouldhawke explains that “people think of settler as a personal identity but it’s more about a categorical relation between a social subject and settler states”[20]. As La Paperson says, the term settler (and native, and slave) describe “relations of power with respect to land. They sound like identities, but they are not identities per se.”[21] Instead of an attempt to flee these labels, we should put our time to better use and focus on changing the conditions producing those relations of power.
Social position as the sole lens of analysis for developing revolutionary strategy is of course insufficient. It matters deeply how people, no matter what their lives are like now, want the world to look like in the future. However, we need to be able to see and understand the different material realities of those around us in order to have any hope of those realities changing in the world we want to build together. Seeing these realities for what they are, and why they are, shows us that the relationships settlers build with the land are far less important than the ones we dismantle. It is clear that supporting the resurgence of Indigenous territorial autonomy needs to be a greater priority than building a territorial autonomy of our own. The question becomes how to build and sustain formations that can offer long term support and solidarity to Indigenous people struggling against the colonial state, and how best to cultivate a politics that will continue to respond to the shifting contexts, relationships, and terrain of that joint struggle toward self-determination and an end to capitalism, colonialism, and Canada.
[3] To be clear, for myself and many others, we saw ourselves as “initiating” specific actions in response to explicit calls for such activity, in response to changing contexts that we thought demanded it, and in at least the case of the rail blockades, very clearly directly inspired by already ongoing Indigenous initiatives. I use the phrase “settler-initiated” not to take credit for the events of what was very clearly an Indigenous-led movement, but rather to note that there is a real difference between those actions seen by supporters and adversaries as taken by Indigenous communities and those recognized as settler solidarity actions.
[4] It should be noted that the communes they describe are essentially nice places to live where people share meals and daily activities and talk to each other, and not necessarily communes on a scale where they would produce meaningful reorganizations of the economy or social reproduction. It is reasonable to assume that shift in scale is desired.
[10] Another example of this kind of communal settlement that I learned about during the writing of this text is the Finnish socialist settlement of Sointula, located on the territory of the ‘Namgis First Nation. The village was established in the early 1900s on so-called Malcolm Island in British Columbia.
[11] The English translation uses the word habitable rather than liveable.
[13] I do not wish here to forward a romanticized view of Indigenous peoples as never exploiting the land, as the Red Paper cautions against doing on page 60. Rather I wish to remind us that without Indigenous peoples’ ability to steward the land, the destruction of capitalism alone would still leave us without the intergenerational knowledge to care for it in effective ways. https://redpaper.yellowheadinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/red-paper-report-final.pdf
[14] Conversely, critiques of anti-blackness and slavery are often not well integrated into analysis coming out of settler radical networks here in Canada compared to in the US. This makes it even worse that Inhabit also makes no reference to this kind of critique or analysis either.
[15] By pre-existing claims, I am referring both to Indigenous claims to land as well as longstanding claims by groups such as the Republic of New Afrika.
[17] It is worth noting that the English and French versions differ somewhat significantly. Whether due to large errors of translation or intentional changes in anticipation of an Anglophone American readership, the closest sentence in the English version reads: “The question of how to inhabit concerns any living being in any given place.” This is a major difference.
[18] #ShutDownCanada was a massive, broad, and heterogeneous Indigenous-led movement. A large catalyst was the militarized RCMP raid on Wet’suwet’en land defenders protecting their home from Coastal Gas Link pipeline construction last winter. In that context, a number of explicit calls for solidarity actions were put out including by Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, and specific camps on the land such as the Gidimt’en checkpoint. Despite these very clear and explicit calls to action, I think that some of the hesitancy of some sympathetic settlers to participate in settler-initiated solidarity actions came from a belief that all actions needed to either be Indigenous-led or explicitly endorsed or approved by an Indigenous person. I believe Indigenous critiques of the ways that settlers participate in anti-colonial organizing are important. I believe that it is crucial to consider how one’s actions might be perceived by or have consequences for Indigenous communities when planning solidarity actions. However, sacrificing basic security principles of “need to know” in order to obtain an Indigenous stamp of approval on a risky settler-initiated action seems like an especially egregious form of tokenism. That our organizing communities in Montreal are often majority or exclusively made up of settlers is something to be examined and addressed on a more foundational level rather than attempting to hide it by seeking an endorsement of our choices after the fact. I could be wrong, but my assumption from this winter was that some settlers sympathetic or supportive of #ShutDownCanada were worried about the risks of participating in solidarity actions and used the fact that some actions were settler initiated to avoid having to take risk and join the blockade. I think this is unfortunate and is something that must be changed in part by clearer anti-colonial analysis coming out of settler networks.
[19] Limited record exists of other speeches to the media, but this is one example. https://contrepoints.media/en/posts/declaration-du-blocage-de-saint-lambert-declaration-from-the-saint-lambert-blocade
Comments Off on Support the Kanienkehaka Land Back Language Camp – Update and Call for Donations
Feb122021
From theKanienkehaka Land Back Language Camp (Facebook)
January 26, 2021
As we approach our 6th month at Kanienkehaka Land Back Language Camp, we’ve hunkered down for the winter season.
We continue to build our school house, and adjust our camp as the weather changes. The Salmon River has frozen over, allowing us to enjoy the ice and the easier access it gives us to the other side of the river.
Our young people have been busy learning the Kaniehkehaka language, with our recent theme being about hunting, trapping and conducting ceremony.
Soon we will be focusing on the ice and the activies, hobbies and survival skills that come with all of its teachings.
Recently we have had both the Surete Du Quebec and RCMP liasons reach out to the camp, asking for a sit down and inquiring on when we plan to leave. So far, no discussions or sit downs have been agreed upon with either agency.
Nia:wen Kowa to everyone who has donated to our GoFundMe, raised monies and/or continue to support our efforts at Kanienkehaka Land Back Language Camp.